I read an interesting article at work from health.msn.com

http://health.msn.com/menshealth/articlepa...p;wa=wsignin1.0


I forwarded the link from my email at work to my Hotmail account. and a day later I received three spam emails with this return address: menshealth-tx[at]persgroep.be

the subject line was Re: Message

Another email listed the return address of menshealth-al[at]freetime.be with Re: Message in the subject line.


I just wanted to post to see if this is something common with MSN, and I can't possibly believe this is a coincidence since I rarely ever get spam on this account. I know Hotmail isn't the best out there, but I've had it a while and was pretty good about keeping spam out of it.

I use Firefox and the only 3rd party cookie I blocked on the MSN article was from 2o7.net

On Hotmail I blocked euroclick.com, atdmt.com, mediaplex.com

All known spyware/adware domains


I guess if this keeps up I'll drop Hotmail. Just wanted to see if anyone had comments.

Let me see whether I understand what you did:

1. Found the article on MSN (presumably not by having received the link in an e-mail).
2. Read the article with your web browser.
3. Pasted the link to the article into an e-mail message
4. Sent the e-mail message from your work address to your hotmail address.

Assuming that this is the correct sequence of events, then I think you are suggesting that Hotmail/MSN somehow peeked into your e-mail message and decided that since you showed an interest in mens' health, your address should be offered up to a spammer.

My conjecture, courtesy of Brother Occam's razor, is that your having received the spams after sending the link to yourseif is simply coincidence. As we all know, "male health" products are very common grist for the spammer's mill, so it isn't surprising in itself to get several of these in a short space of time. It also wouldn't be very surprising for a spammer to use "menshealth" as a bogus from-address (and, you DO know that these from addresses are nearly always bogus and significant of nothing, right?). If you submitted these spams to the SpamCop reporting service, I'd bet that you would find that they had nothing to do with freetime.be.

For Hotmail to mine their users' messages in this fashion, if found out, would (I think) create a huge scandal, hardly worth the relatively paltry money that a spammer might pay for such referrals. What you suggest isn't impossible by any means, but seems rather remote to me.

It can be very tempting to attribute a rise in spam, or receipt of a particular spam, to some prior event. However, you should strongly consider whether this is simply faulty post-hoc reasoning.

This sort of thinking is by no means rare. I have an extremely intelligent and technically savvy friend who once asked me why he got eBay phish mails every time he bid on eBay. I explained that the phish mails came completely unbidden, and that I myself continue to get them although it's been over three years since my last bid on eBay.

-- rick

I also have a hotmail account (actually three hotmail accounts). One account I used for manual reports and very shortly started receiving spam. The other two almost never - even before hotmail started filtering - received spam. One had a dictionary attack; the other once in a great while will receive a spam.

On the spammy hotmail account, after hotmail started to aggressively filter for spam, I rarely receive spam any more. On one of the other accounts, I can see the results of hotmail filtering because I have another account forwarded there. Hotmail catches a lot of spam, but also, on occasion, 'good' email.

I received three menshealth spams plus a 419 scam and another spam that shows up every once in a while on the spammy hotmail account and no spam on either of the other, non-spammy hotmail accounts.

It is possible to have spyware on your computer so that you get specific spam after visiting certain sites. That happened to me before I discovered Adaware. I was wary of the coincidences at first because, as in the other poster's example, I got plenty of spam of the same kind without going near a website that could connect me to a particular subject. However, my husband went to a manufacturer's site for some kind of specific part for, say, boilers. Not because he was interested in the parts, but because he was trying to find a military buddy and knew that this manufacturer were the buddy's family. When I got a spam about boilers which I never had before, I was sure that I had been targeted. That's when posters on spamcop told me about Adaware.


In this case I had not visited any site nor emailed anyone about any health issues, men's or otherwise and I still got the same spam. IMHO, the menshealth perpetuators managed to get by the hotmail filters and it was a pure coincidence that the OP sent an email on that subject.

Miss Betsy

You got the sequence of events correct. I did leave one part out...after I received the email in my Hotmail, I created a new message to forward the link to someone else. I didn't forward the Hotmail message I sent myself, I just create a completely new message to send the link to a friend.


It was immediately after I composed and sent this new message to my friend that I received the first spam. It was a matter of minutes. I instinctively opened the message without thinking about it since it seemed to be in response to the message I had just sent! That also seemed to cut down on the odds of it being a random "men's health" attack.

The message referenced "menshealth" in the return addresses but the actual content of the first message was the typical online pharmacy ad.

I said I rarely get spam on this account and I'm talking months and months ago that I may have gotten a spam or two, so rare I can't remember the last time before this.

My spam filter on Hotmail is set to the most aggressive filter aside from exclusively allowing only those in my address book. These messages went directly to my Inbox and weren't caught as spam. Again not a rare occurence but with these being such obvious spam, possibly with bogus addresses, and the 'onlline pharmacy' content it again seems strange it wasn't caught.

Yes I do know that the return addresses are most probably bogus. I didn't forward any of the emails to abuse or spamcop, nor did I fish too far into the headers or content to hopefully prevent more attacks.






Yes I actually frequently use Adaware which is a nice "free" program but I wish you didn't have to pay to block cookies and other spyware it detects. I also use Spyware Blaster a free program which will block known cookies and spyware. Me using these programs actively would also seem to cut down on the chance of receiving spam. I'm going to do a full Adaware scan when I get home, but my guess is, it won't find much of anything.

Thanks for the suggestions.

It is also possible your friends machine is infected with a virus/spyware and your address was picked up by that system which is actively looking for addresses to send to.

You have a good point. I'm guessing he rarely scans for adware or spyware so I'm going to recommend he do that.

Have to note ... adware, spyware, malware, virus, trojan, etc. are not the same thing. Tools used to look for these items generally specialize ... antivirus tools look for virus infections, adware looks for that ilk, etc.

Small note: per the Forum FAQ .. please edit the quoted parts of these posts. There is little reason to quote an entire previous post if you are only commenting / replying to a single sentence in that post. Kept 'short' enough, both the previous post and your reply can usually be seen on the same screen in most cases by the next viewer.

The reason you even GET spam is the same reason you see an ad on the top of the page. Microsoft gets PAID to send those spam messages. So, in short, either your friend's computer IS infected, or Microsoft IS actually getting paid for every referral they give a spammer. Here's what I'd do. First check to make ure that your junk mail filter is set to high by clicking Options at the top-right corner of the page, then click More options in the drop-down menu, then under Junk e-mail, select the filter level link. Second, take all the spammers' e-mail addresses and add them to your unsafe list.

Hope this helps!